1908 New York to Paris Race and the 1909 Ocean to Ocean Race, from New York City to Seattle
Bad Roads to Good Roads The Great Races: 1908‐09 Part One In 1909 only seven percent of the two million miles of highways in the United States were classified as "improved." In rain and snow, most American roads became impassable. Encyclopedia.com notes: “When the Office of Public Roads Inquiries undertook the first inventory of all U.S. roads in 1904, the country had 2,151,570 miles of rural public roads, but 1,997,908 miles, or 93 percent, were dirt. Of the 153,662 miles with any kind of surfacing, only 38,622 miles were stone or macadam, while the remainder included 108,232 miles of gravel and 6,810 of shell, sand, clay, brick, or other materials. Only a few hundred miles of roads in the entire country were suitable for motor vehicles.” ….. “As motor‐vehicle sales grew rapidly—exceeding 1,000 for the first time in 1899, 100,000 in 1909, and 1 million in 1916—Americans demanded and got good roads.” In 1908 and 1909 two long distance endurance automobile races with ties to Washington State helped to focus public attention on the deplorable condition of American roads. These were the 1908 New York to Paris Race and the 1909 Ocean to Ocean Race, from New York City to Seattle. In this Part One of this blogpost series, we’ll touch briefly on the 1908 New York to Paris Race. In Part Two we will set the stage for the 1909 Ocean to Ocean Race itself and briefly cover the travails of the “pace car” of the Race.
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